Through A Glass, Darkly
by DarthGabithaTheHutt
Summary: Once the ghost is gone, Lucas doesn't stop drawing.


Once the ghost is gone, when Dean's gone, his mom just tries to put the whole thing behind her. It wasn't exactly the sort of memory you'd want to dwell on, he guesses. A dead husband, a dead father, an almost-dead son. His mom wants to go back to normal, so they would go back to normal.

And they do. Mostly.

Mom goes back to work, and now Lucas is talking again, he has to go back to school. Talking doesn't always mean talkative, though, and there's this one kid... It doesn't matter. Lucas isn't scared of much anymore, he's had enough of being scared, and a bully only two years older than him isn't going to make the list. It all blows over by the first half-term, mostly because bullies aren't used to being stood up to by anyone and it kinda takes the fun out of it all.

He takes to writing _Zeppelin Rules _on the backs of all his books. It makes Mom smile. And he sticks to art, which doesn't. Lucas had never really drawn anything before Dad died. But now, without a ghost hanging over his shoulder, it's not weird or creepy anymore. It's just something he does, and after a few months, his mom stops worrying about it. When she starts suggesting that he take lessons, Lucas relaxes inwardly and rolls his eyes at her.

xxx

Four months After, as Lucas thinks of it, he draws a picture of himself, outside his school, talking to a lady with long hair and a healing cut on her chin. It's an early picture, he knows, and he ends up drawing it two or three times before the lady actually arrives. He knows she knows Dean, but it's nice to finally know what her name is. There was a picture hidden in his room of Dean and Sam and Sara eating a meal together, all happy and relaxed. So he knows she's okay, that he can talk to her.

She sits him down and very seriously explains to him about the drawings and how they happen before the events they show. He lets her talk for quite a while before telling her that he knows all this already, that Dean explained it to him. She rolls her eyes and calls Dean all sorts of names, smiling despite herself, and gives him her phone number. He already has a postbox address for Dean and an email address for Sam.

Sara does tell him some things that he doesn't know, like ways to make one of the early drawings come when he wants it to, although she says that will take a lot of practice. And she warns him, even more seriously, not to tell anyone about the drawings, not even if they seem to be like Dean or Sam, or tell him that they already know.

Lucas looks at the cut on her chin, surrounded by bruising, and nods, promises never to tell anyone. He remembers when his grandad arrested Mr Williams, the bruises Mrs Williams had on her face, and nods again. Then he tells her about Zeppelin, smiling when she does.

She ruffles his hair before she leaves, tells him to be careful.

xxx

His drawings are getting clearer, the ones that aren't really his. The first ones had been pretty bad, Lucas knows that, and he'd switched the crayons for decent pencils and a really nice fine-line pen. And it was paying off. He'd managed to draw out that whole pop quiz a week before it happened, clear enough to read the questions. That had been cool.

And it had got him thinking. When he drew that picture, he'd been pretty obsessed about the test. All of his other early pictures, he'd drawn almost absently, not really thinking about anything. So maybe Sara was right, and he could control the drawings. So he tried it again a few times, concentrating on what would be for lunch the next day, or what his mom would do that weekend. It worked, every time.

He's been thinking about this for a while before he actually sits down, thinks about Dean and Sam, a few months into the future. The picture comes out clear, real clear, and he can see them both, standing by a car, tools all around them. And he tries again, but this time he thinks about his mom and a couple of years into the future. That picture, that picture he doesn't show to anyone, not ever. She's holding a baby, with a man standing be her, both of them obviously happy, more than happy.

Maybe Mom's a little surprised when he takes to her new boyfriend so quickly, but she's hardly going to complain about it. But by then, Lucas has a whole stack of drawings, Mom and Steve together, always happy, and he wants Mom to look like that _now, _so he jokes and complains, and never does anything to make either of them think that he really doesn't want Steve to be around.

Besides, the guy likes Zeppelin. How bad could he be?

xxx

A few years later, his pictures start getting... darker. Scarier.

There's one of Dean surrounded by demons, in a place with no light besides fire. And one of Sam and Sara, standing side by side with their backs to a grave. More and more of his pictures have nothing to do with anyone he knows, some of them don't even have people in them. Just ghosts and monsters and things that he doesn't want to think too carefully about.

He starts scanning them into his computer, emailing them off to Sam and Sara. He doesn't know if they help or not, but he feels better once he's done it. Sam doesn't reply, but he gets a brief email back from Sara, a list of instructions. She says it'll make his home safer and so he follows them perfectly.

Steve's a little confused by the sudden appearance of odd ornaments and little herb bags at all the doors and windows, but Mom remembers too well, even if she doesn't want to, and Lucas is never told to take them down again. He puts extra in his sister's room, adding some of the little bags to the mobile hanging over her crib, and when she's six months old, he stays up all night and he doesn't know why he has to do that, just that he does.

Nothing happens. But he feels better for having done it.

xxx

He's getting pretty good at drawing stuff that's about him or his family, does it often enough that it's almost impossible to really surprise him anymore, but he's a big believer in the whole _forewarned is forearmed _thing. He prefers it this way, even if his Mom is getting more and more suspicious.

It's a pretty huge surprise, though, when he comes home from school to find a guy standing in his room, looking at all the drawings that are supposed to be in the boxes under the bed.

"You have an almighty gift, Lucas," the guy says. He's dressed all formal, but his hair is sticking up all over the place, and he's wearing a long coat despite the awesome weather.

"Thanks," Lucas replies, because his mom taught him to be polite, and then says, "I'm calling the police," because she didn't raise an idiot.

"Do not be afraid. My name is Castiel. I am an Angel of the Lord."

"O-kay," Lucas says slowly, frowning. "Um, are you sure?"

"I needed to see your visions. I must find Sara Lucian."

"Isn't God supposed to know everything?"

Castiel looks up, looks right at Lucas, and the boy shivers, looking away. Wordlessly, he takes his sketch-pad from his bag and hands it over. The last picture, the newest, was drawn only a few hours ago, the ink smudged from where he shut the book too soon at the end of class. Sara and another woman, facing each other.

"It's the only picture I've drawn of her in months," Lucas offers when Castiel doesn't say anything. "The other woman is new, I've never seen her before."

"Thank you, Lucas." Castiel is still holding the sketchbook, almost reverently. "Dark times are here. Your family will be protected. But you must continue to draw the Lord's plans. Should Sara come here, tell her nothing. She is... not herself."

"What's happened to Dean?"

"It doesn't matter."

"You said you were an angel?"

Castiel nods, looking confused.

"What the hell kind of lord do you serve if what happens to a good man doesn't matter?" Lucas takes back his book, yanking it from the man's lax hands. Years later, he'll be amazed at himself, but right now, he's a child who has seen good and evil and damn well knows the difference between the two.

"I did not mean- It will be undone."

Lucas smiles. It's odd how Castiel doesn't seem to understand the movement, but whatever. "Good."

The front doors slams shut and he hears his sister fussing. When he looks back, Castiel is gone.

xxx

Months later, with a picture of Sam standing over a bloody and broken Dean still resting on his desk, he doesn't argue when his mom switches off the news when he comes down to get something to drink. He hasn't felt this sure that something bad was going to happen since Then, and he's still young enough to kid himself that ignoring it will make it go away. Mom can feel it coming as well, he knows she can. She's a good enough mother to pick up on his moods, after all, and even if she couldn't, Lucas has always suspected that his talents come from her. Sara told him this kind of thing was genetic, sometimes. Or it was a side effect of watching his father being murdered by a ghost, but still. Mom knows this - whatever _this _might turn out to be - is coming.

But forewarned isn't always forearmed, Lucas realises. He can draw a demon coming after his mom, his baby sister, but he has no idea what to do when it actually gets here. The tricks Sara taught him are all defensive, and he doesn't think that playing defence alone will get them through this in one piece. He needs to know how to fight these things, but he had no idea how to find out how to actually do that. And he's still a kid. Dean, Sam, Sara, they're all grown-ups and even they couldn't deal with all this by themselves.

Lucas isn't sure if that's all there is to this. Hunting can't be like math class, just follow the right formula and you always get the right answer. He thinks it's more like art; you learn the basics and then have to figure out the best way to do it for you. Only he doesn't have the time to learn the basics, let alone figure out how to make them work right for him.

Mom comes into the kitchen, putting down her glass to stroke his hair, like she did when he was a little kid. "What's wrong, baby?"

"Nothing, Mom. Just thinking."

xxx

He goes through every single picture he's ever drawn, looking for something, anything, that'll tell him how to do this right.

What he finds isn't exactly a how-to book of hunting, but it might just be the next best thing.

It's an old picture, one he drew a little after he first met Dean and Sam. They're standing outside some old building, with two teenagers, a boy and a girl. Dean's holding a small card out to the girl. It takes two redraws and a magnifying glass before Lucas can see it clear enough to get most of a phone number off it. The last two numbers are still too blurred to see probably, but it's close enough.

A handful of coins in his pocket, he heads down to the phone box by the motel and starts dialling, writing down the numbers as he goes to avoid repeats. He ends up apologising to half a dozen people before he gets the right number.

"Singer's Salvage Yard."

"Mr Singer? My name's Lucas. I know the Winchesters."

xxx

Things do get worse.

A lot worse.

But for the first time, Lucas thinks he might be able to draw a decent ending to all this.


End file.
